Chinese factory in hot water after employees shown stepping and even sleeping on noodles

There were several scandals last year in Japan involving people being photographed inside ice cream freezers in convenience stores or lying atop bags of chicken nuggets in fast food restaurants. But it would seem that some workers in China have taken it to the next level, with scenes that may make you wish you could grow all your food yourself.

These photos were apparently taken inside a noodle factory in Dongguan City, and subsequently uploaded to Weibo, China’s microblogging platform, where they were quickly attacked for the hideously unsanitary conditions they revealed. They show the noodles the factory produces spread across the floor as employees fling them around and at one point even appear to roll in the admittedly comfortable-looking heaps. There’s clearly no regard for even basic hygiene concerns as workers scoop the noodles up in un-gloved hands and trample all over them with their bare feet.

Perhaps there’s an alternative explanation for the scenes here, and what’s really going on is a cleanup operation after some bizarre noodle explosion. That’s what we’d desperately like to think, anyway, as we have no idea where the food was destined for and would really rather we didn’t have to swear off all noodles for life. We can only hope that this isn’t the usual state of the factory, and that the noodles didn’t ultimately end up on someone’s plate.

▼ Floor flavour noodles. Mmmm!

▼ Face flavour noodles!

▼ Mmm, feet flavour noodles!

▼We hope they at least washed their hands…

▼ More noodles than your body has room for.

We’re really hoping a reasonable explanation for this lack of basic hygiene comes out soon. Until then, we’re swearing off instant noodles for a while…